The Experience - Fazioli F308

Sympathetic resonance isn't supported I think for multiple reasons. I'm taking educated guesses here, but recording those separately increases the sampling time significantly, or audio software tricks are too complicated to isolate it. Also, applying it properly to the base samples may not be simple either.

The how to's on piano book and on the YouTube channels contain alot of detailed info about how to use kontakt to transition velocities and I had to figure them out myself for sfz. I'd say most free libraries don't go to this extent using all of those tricks. Adding sympathetic resonance is yet another step. I might look into it for the future but given that I'm sampling opp (other people's pianos) my time with them is very short and I need to optimize setup performance and takedown. It might not be feasible for me.

Irmin so it can be used on an iPad

In case anyone is interested, Soundfonts 4u made a soundfont version of one of the pairs of audience mics. I think soundfonts are more compatible with ipad. It doesn't have quite the number of features as the Kontakt or SFZ libraries, but the basic sound and playability is similar.

https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/

I finally managed to review this plugin too. i think it's awesome - more details in my review video 🙂

I have added it to my comparison.

Thanks to both!

Someone wrote a companion app to get the headtracking/VR part working with a webcam. There are different ways of doing this, but this guy made an app that is hopefully easier to set up - I think it requires python.

Guess I'm not the only crazy one.

OK, am I being sensitive when I say that I'm insulted by having a two-finger pianist feature my Fazioli Library? Seriously?

dore_m Welcome to the big times. That's actually awesome.

I'm just frustrated that after months of work, with feedback and help from other 'Clackers, that it was featured with what is basically Chopsticks. I can respect that the guy might not have pianist skills, but wow - I'm going to attach a midi file next time. I'm going to have to watch Gamma1734's review again to calm down. Tchaikovsky Concerto vs Chopsticks….

dore_m OK, am I being sensitive when I say that I'm insulted by having a two-finger pianist feature my Fazioli Library? Seriously?

Don't fight it; just roll with it.

Adopt a marketing program around "Listen to how good it sounds with just two fingers. Imagine what you can do with ten fingers!"

dore_m I'm just frustrated that after months of work, with feedback and help from other 'Clackers, that it was featured with what is basically Chopsticks. I can respect that the guy might not have pianist skills, but wow - I'm going to attach a midi file next time.

That's the point with free stuff: they take a life of their own. Even more so with software, which may become used for things that you did not anticipate and you don't like (think of anything in the current geopolitical situation, and imagine some open source software written by us run by "the others").

Bottom line? It's bad, but it could have been worse. Does this make it better? 'Course not, but…

Ralphiano Don't fight it; just roll with it.

Adopt a marketing program around "Listen to how good it sounds with just two fingers. Imagine what you can do with ten fingers!"

:point_up: (grrr, that does not work)

It's all good. Gamma1734's playing calmed me down.

Reminds me that the audience over there at Pianobook aren't all pianists, and probably mostly not. The libraries now can be sorted by piano, and playability rating. It's peculiar because the Fazioli library is ranked 10th, and it's probably the most playable (by a pianist) out of all of them, IMHO. I think non-pianists are confusing playability with textural inspiration, maybe because they aren't able to control such an instrument. Or am I just being indignant?

dore_m Remember the american saying: There's no such thing as bad advertising. Who knows, the next thing may be that Stu Harrison does a 20-minute video on it. 🙂

Yes, you are over sensitive by 50% because the "reviewer" was clearly using 3 fingers and not 2 as you claim! Your comment was insulting to him 😀

@dore_m As you may know, I spearheaded the Piano VI database at PianoWorld. There isn't much public user data on piano VI user types & use cases but I would guess the lion's share are NOT piano players. I would venture to guess well over 95% are not proficient piano players.

So don't get too frustrated with a positive review.

@dore_m @porco_rosso @navindra you may be interested in looking at the thread below, which is related with this one I am responding to. In short, for tl;dr; people: somebody found a way to let Pianoteq do what you have done with head tracking. I plan to test it, one of these days….

If any of you does too, please report back what you find.

https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?pid=983508#p983508

@RIP you can point them to my Fazioli and Yamaha S6 libraries, where there are links to the various eye/headtracking softwares that can be used. The common protocol is OSC (Open sound control), which is more flexible than MIDI and can be used with the free tools that I showed in one or two of the videos.

Pianoteq could also be used within a DAW with the OSC head tracking tools as I have done, but the result would not be as good as my libraries, in which the mics are placed in specific directions relative to the player and piano. However, Pianoteq could indeed be more effective if the developers directly opened up their rendering engine to the OSC control, which would be more direct than my "virtual speaker placement" method which converts source microphones into binaural using HRTF (Head related transfer functions) - a simulation of a binaural microphone setup - primarily the Neumann Binaural head.

Anyway, I'm not a part of that forum, and don't plan to contribute. You can forward my thoughts if you like.

Thanks, I posted some of these thoughts there.

Of course if there is a direct OSC interface that would be ideal, however I think PTQ could already achieve at last what you have done and perhaps more. This is the reason for pointing the thread to you.

Why could Pianoteq do more?

1. Pianoteq has a binaural mic placement in which you can decide head size and position in space
2. Recently its developer introduced a JSON interface with which you can programmatically change any setting that normally would be point-and-click.
3. = 2. + 1. Or in other words make the head tracker trigger the mic placement. It'd work immediately. The only possible problem being if there is any click or interruption of sound when the mic placement is triggered
4. Somebody tested such possible problem by using a fader to change the mic placement, and it worked well, so it appears Pianoteq developers don't need to do anything

As such, a small script between the head tracker and the JSON Pianoteq interface could be all that is needed, without anything additional.

I just opened up the PTQ demo to see the binaural placement, and yes, I can see that the controls are there, but not standard roll/pitch/yaw. The standard controls are yaw (head rotation left/right), head position (front to back), and head position (side along keyboard). That means you could realistically move your head toward the piano and from side to side, and turn your head. My implementation is roll/pitch/yaw, which are rotations from a single point - turn head left/right, look up/down, and turn your head sideways (one ear closer to ground).

There are arguable pros/cons for both implementations, And certainly using the PTQ binaural rendering engine would be better and more direct, but connecting the OSC or headtracking software has always been the biggest challenge to me, and really is beyond my coding capabilities….

Over the years, there were some threads on Pianoteq head tracking. A few "insiders" noted that real-time head-tracking would require a serious rethink of the software.

https://gitlab.com/hberntsen/pianoteq-head-tracking